Škoda

Today we toured the Škoda (pronounced SHKO-dah) car manufacturing plant in Mladá Boleslav, a city in the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic, about an hour from where I'm staying in Čelákovice. It was a great opportunity to compare and contrast what I saw at the Volkswagen plant in Puebla, Mexico. Interestingly enough, in 2000 VW became the 100% shareholder of Škoda. They purchased Škoda in order to increase their presence in Central and Eastern Europe. Škoda approved the purchase as they were able to pursue synergies such as R&D breadth, as well as other partnering benefits such as capital infusion and technology transfer knowledge. Ironically, Škoda's sales are cannibalizing VW's profits in Western Europe.

Škoda's slogan is "simply clever", which I find pretty appealing to B class drivers (read below for more details). After the tour of the plant, one of the GM's of the company came back to our school to give us a presentation. I noticed he was a little apprehensive in his speech delivery (flashbacks to Public Speaking Class with Prof MacDonald came to mind). Although he used signposting, he tended to say "um" (or at least the Czech equivalent of "eh") quite a bit, which decreased his overall flow. However, I admire him for tackling such a technically challenging presentation in a foreign language.

Škoda is a very fascinating company. It has several models including the Favorit, Felicia, Octavia, Fabia, Superb and Roomster (in no particular order). He described car classes that range from A00 for city cars, A0 for supermini cars, A for compact cars, B for midsize cars, C for extended midsize cars, D for fullsize cars, E for SUVs, to T platform for vans. These letters, I found thanks to Wikipedia, refer to the VW platforms for which many of the Škoda cars possess. The Octavia A5 competes with cars such as the Audi A3 and VW Golf A5. The recently added line, the Superb, which is a B class sedan, is equivalent to the Passat and actually shares the same platform.

The leadership team have transformed Škoda with a three-phase strategy: Transformation ('94 - '00), Consolidation ('01 - '04) and Expansion ('05 - '08). Their marketing position is described as price-valued. Their designs are described as differentiated from VW's classical design. I think the design is quite appealing. They sold 555,000 units in 2006 and have plans to sell 600,000 by 2008 and 1,000,000 cars by 2015. Oh yeah, as Professor Moffett pointed out in class, many Europeans say "turnover" instead of sales or revenue, as did the Škoda GM.

After the tour we toured the "muzeum" as its spelled in Czech. They had classic cars dating back to as early as the 1920's. I was surprised to learn that their first car was made available for sale in 1905 (3 years before Ford rolled out their Model-T!). Their emblem features their "famous winged arrow."

As I listened to the manager deliver his speech I couldn't help but daydream that someday I would be in his position. Also, now I plan to pursue a PhD someday, maybe in strategy. Who knows...Dr. Lazo has a nice ring to it. For now, it's back to reading for RBE Europe...